The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 849381.
Global population growth means that food production needs to increase. Food manufacturers find themselves under pressure to meet both quantity and quality/safety requirements. Unfortunately, efficient production lines do not necessarily go hand in hand with food safety, as faster processes pose higher risks of contamination.
Despite advances in food processing and high safety standards, food safety continues to constitute a worldwide public health concern. Foreign bodies such as plastics, insects and other materials are frequently found. Faced with this phenomenon, enforcement authorities are losing credibility, companies face financial and reputational damage and consumers increasingly distrust food products.
The intake of plastics or glass, for example, can generate complications, such as perforation of tissues of the mouth, tongue, throat, stomach and intestine.
Product recalls or withdrawals from the production lines generate huge net losses for the companies (direct operational costs associated with managing the incident, such as notification of regulatory bodies and consumers, product retrieval, storage and destruction of the unsalable product)
A single case of food contamination calls into question the reliability of the company involved. It can take decades for a company to rebuild its brand reputation.
The withdrawal of a single jar of tomato of 125g generates a waste of 225L of water and 1.5 kg of CO2. There are many reasons for food waste: the lack of technologies capable of rightly evaluating food safety and quality is surely one of them.
For more information about the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF)*, click here
* The EU tool to ensure the flow of information to enabling swift reaction when risks to public health are detected in the food chain.
Food inspection technologies include a wide range of techniques: X-ray machines, metal detectors, thermal imaging, and ultrasonic. Among the available technologies, the X-ray systems are by far the best solution, because they identify a much wider range of contaminants and can be applied at different stages of the production process.
This being said, the problem of food contamination is far from being solved. Even though the current dual-energy X-ray detection systems have resulted in significant improvements in food safety, they still do not address crucial challenges: they do not identify low-density foreign bodies and are not capable of characterising the material composition.
* Low cost
* Efficient in detecting metal foreign bodies
* Not sensitive to small-sized metal bodies
* Not sensitive to non-metal materials
* Cannot be used on metal packaging due to low penetrating power
* Accurate identification of the physical-chemical properties of the sample material inspected
* Sensitive only to superficial layers because of the weak penetration power of the radiation
* Strong penetrating power even for materials placed into metal or glass containers
* Detection of high-density foreign bodies (metal, stones, glass)
* Not sensitive to low-density foreign bodies (plastics, wood, insects, cigarette butts etc.)
* No measurement of the physical-chemical properties
XSpectra®: our new generation of X-ray inspection systems also applies to food safety. It is capable to detect both low- and high-density foreign bodies and contaminants with a high degree of accuracy.
Thanks to its inherent properties, XSpectra® is a win-win-win situation: for the consumers, for the food manufacturers and ultimately for the environment.
XSpectra® detects both high- and low-density foreign bodies, whereas the conventional X-ray systems detect only high-density foreign bodies.
Like no other technology currently available, XSpectra® performs an analysis of the physical and chemical properties of the product. It is like getting the fingerprint of the material inspected.
XSpectra® eliminates only non-compliant food products, reducing drastically the number of FPA (less than 1 of 10,000 vs. 1 out of 500 with conventional detection systems) and therefore the amount of food waste.
XSpectra® is faster than current technologies, thus increasing the number of products analysed on the production lines (real time analysis - 1 to 2 milliseconds).
Very easy to use, XSpectra® supports the plant management with real-time information on the nature and the localisation of the problems identified.
A WINNING BET: keep the products safe and the industry effective, while ensuring optimal sustainability!
